Hello everyone!
It’s been a while since I wrote anything, but Holy Week 2025 and the lead up to Easter is on its way! And with it, well, fresh art!
Being the Artist in Residence at Boise First Congregational, United Church of Christ is wonderful as I share my art, but to artistically energize the congregation also feels great! So this year, I’ve asked two other artists in the congregation, Marlene Mussler Wright and J. Megan Ferrel, to join me in the Holy Week art show!
For Palm Sunday, Marlene Mussler Wright created Peace for the Path Ahead (2025), acrylic on canvas.
Peace for the Path Ahead
By Marlene Mussler Wright
Marlene’s Artist Statement:
Palm Sunday, in many ways, felt like the Treefort of its time—an eagerly anticipated event where crowds poured into the streets, hoping to catch a glimpse of someone they had only heard stories about. I wanted to capture that sense of excitement in the crowd and set it against the quiet humility and deep connection between Jesus and the donkey.
Blue and red are woven throughout the painting. In traditional iconography, these colors are used to represent Jesus’ humanity (red) and divinity (blue). Blue, especially, was precious—one of the most expensive pigments of the time—used only for the most sacred moments.
This day is full of celebration, but it also carries the weight of what’s to come. I think of the donkey not just as a steady, supportive companion—offering a kind of ancient, gentle therapy—carrying Jesus calmly through the chaos of the crowd.
For Good Friday, I created Crucifixion (2025) with ink, fire, on carved African mahogany.
Crucifixion
By Gretchen Weitemier
My Artist Statement:
The Earth and the sky are scorched. Doom is all around.
The tool of cruel death towers high in the burnt sky.
Throngs of witnesses mourn their Savior.
Jesus‘s brown skinned body, taken down from the cross, is carried to the tomb by grieving faithful.
The brokenhearted weep bitterly.
The moon is blood.
And lastly, for Easter, Megan Ferrel created Resurrection (2025), acrylic on wood panel:
Resurrection
By J. Megan Ferrel
Megan’s Artist Statement:
“I am the resurrection and the life” (John 11:25-26 KJV).
My goal for this piece was to show in an abstract manner the resurrection of Jesus. I struggle with the idea of depicting Christ realistically for my understanding of him as the resurrected God is an abstract concept. That he lives to this day is abstract or even metaphorical. How does he live? When have we seen him? I believe that the answers to these questions may not be so literal.
This image was painted using acrylic paints on a wood panel. The symbol of the cross is echoed in this painting as a kind of radiating light, like a beam shooting upwards and outwards as rainbow light cascades downward. This divine light can shine through us.
You are Loved. We are Loved. We all have the great potential to Love as Jesus does.
Conclusion
The highs and lows of the Biblical stories relate to the many ups and downs in peoples’ lives, and Marlene, myself, and Megan have meditated on ours in our artwork.
Our art shows Rabbi Jesus the Savior arriving in Jerusalem on Palm Sunday who teaches us to love one another, knowing of his own fate as the donkey calmly steers him along, the pain and suffering of Jesus the Christ’s betrayal, abandonment, abuse, and death that mirrors all human suffering, and the Resurrected One that assures us that no pain is final, and has the potential for Love and new beginnings.
These stories have given people meaning to understand bigger connections to their place in the world in countless ways. Among them are Jesus’s teachings, empathy and comfort for our suffering, and even inspiration for the renewal of ways of understanding one’s self and life.
Marlene, myself, and Megan share our artwork and thoughts in hopes that others appreciate and are enriched by our spirtual expressions as they experience their own time of Holy Week.
The Holy Week show is on display at Boise First Congregational, United Church of Christ (located at 2201 W. Woodlawn Ave Boise, ID 83702) now through the Easter 2025 season. I can’t wait to see you there!